Re: Sage and Simms at Costco

Posted by Woody on 2011-04-02 15:22:30
in reply to Sage and Simms at Costco posted by Woody on 2011-04-01 18:00:11

I don’t believe the either Sage or Simms would knowingly sell to Costco. I do believe that they may have been naïve to Costco’s business practices. That said, I don’t see naivety as an excuse. Costco practices “diversionary distribution practices” to bring product to its customers, which many of us are. I can only imagine that Costco approached both Sage and Simms to make a purchase and were rebuffed. However a large order of a single type of rod and a particular wader should have raised alarm bells in both companies. From what I read, the order may have been placed by an overseas distributor. But an order of that size should have been reviewed very carefully and questioned. Maybe things just seemed good to be to be true with such a large order in a slow economy. However, I can’t imagine that somebody in management (especially Sage management) doesn’t read the “Business Section” of the Seattle Times. There have been numerous articles about Costco’s involvement in grey market items from overseas distributors. A little research (Google “costco court cases”) would have been sufficient to make them aware to what was happening. A little more delving would what turned up the following two articles.

Oh well, they both were fooled. What I don’t understand why that are not saying anything about how this happened and how they plan on dealing with these types of issues in the future. Why should they. Here is why. We, their customers, support their Manufacturers’ established pricing. We knowingly pay a higher price for their products to maintain the distribution and service system that we have. That is the local “Fly Shop”. From what I have read, they have both told the fly shops what has occurred. But this is not being shared. I feel that both Simms and Sage should get on the internet and make a statement of what has occurred to their customers. We as their customers, deserve this.